By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
What can I say about what happened this week that you haven’t already heard? Planet Waves has done an insightful job of following the details and shaping the content of the election result, so that story is already told. I suppose we could talk about the manipulations and fears around our pocketbook issues, the coming “grand bargain” that has us spun up over the possibility of gutted entitlements, as opposed to dire projections that we are about to throw ourselves off a “fiscal cliff.”
We could look at the civil war in Syria, with some 8000 refugees fleeing over the border to Turkey, who appears to be less than thrilled to host them. We could ponder the ramifications of Iran’s downing an American drone, thumbing their nose at a nation already anxious to punish them, and leading to even harsher sanctions by the international community, but I don’t want to. I’m not ready to move on yet.
There it is, then. The nation has been in campaign mode for at least eighteen months — roughly the equivalent of the period Obama enjoyed as a new president before the 2010 Tea Party campaign stalled his progress (and often without the edge provided him by the ailing Senators Byrd and Kennedy.) That’s a long time, too long to simply move forward without a glimpse backwards at where we started, and seeing where we finished, closing in on these shifting energies of 2012.
I have need to review the bits and pieces strewn on the convention hall floor, examine the empty cups and crumpled confetti, feel the remnants of both elation and disappointment that still crowd the ether. I want to rethink the hot air, now that it’s gone from shrill and desperate to accusatory and despondent. With such an extraordinary historical juncture as the 2012 presidential election — an energetic turning point — just behind us, there are energy strands that need to be tied together, as it were, a narrative to be summed up and put to bed.